‘Can’t this just f*cking exist? Can’t a play from a person like me just be a f*cking play already?’: Metamodern Self-reflexivity as an approach to tackling Black Trauma Narratives in Arinzé Kene’s Misty (2018)

Variably described as ‘a blend of gig-theatre, spoken word [and] live art’ (Kene 2018) or a ‘qausi-musical’ (Meyer 2023), playwright and performer Arinzé Kene’s Misty (2018) employs metatheatrical storytelling to intertwine two narratives – the story of a young, Black man’s experience of gentrification in Hackney, East London, and the story of Kene dealing with the criticism levered upon him during the development and performance of the piece itself. Misty marked only the fourth time a play by a Black British playwright transferred to London’s West End, and Kene’s performance cross-examines his own position within a predominantly white theatre scene – challenging his paradoxical requirement to both appeal to the (commercial) expectations for a ‘Black Play’, and his own friends’ and family’s accusations of his commodification and repetition of the trope of Black Trauma Narratives for white audiences (cf. Brady & Delle 2023).

As theatre moves beyond postmodernism (Bogart 2014; Lavender 2016; Schulze 2017), the use of metatheatrical and self-reflexive devices has shifted in application. Whilst postmodern reflexivity called attention to the limitations of the piece – reminding the reader that ‘the work is, indeed, a piece of “work” and so not to be entirely “trusted” (Dember 2018) – metamodern (Vermeulen & can den Akker 2010) self-reflexivity draws attention to the felt experience of the artist and / or audience (cf. Dember 2018, Drayton 2024). Kene’s use of such aesthetics highlights his own complex positionality and centres how he – as both person and playwright/performer – feels about this complexity throughout. Drawing on Cahill (2015) and Sibthorpe’s (2018) understanding of levels of contemporary metatheatricality, this paper examines how Kene’s use of self-reflexive storytelling oscillates between the real and the fake, between the impassioned and the hopeless, between being a Black Trauma play and a play centring on the problematics of Black Trauma plays. Misty’s metamodern self-reflexivity questions the purpose, impact and responsibility of theatre – and who is allowed to perform it – whilst simultaneously extolling the power of staging such work.